Comments

Tags Cloud

Archive for July, 2011

The so-called international community must be either bored or out of this planet. Otherwise it would not have wasted years and years in expensive meetings and lengthy discussions before ending up, twelve months ago, with an indisputable and undisputed finding—that safe water and sanitation is a ‘human right’!

Credit: UN

A whole year after, and now that the governments of rich countries have done good part of what seems to be now their job, i.e., rescuing big banks and corporations, there are still 2,6 billion people who lack access to basic sanitation, and 1,1 billion do not any at all, while 900 million people worldwide are deprived from clean water, according to the United Nations.

UN reports also indicate that about 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year and 443 million school days are lost because of water and sanitation-related diseases.

Extremists would have the best chance to take possession of Pakistani nuclear weapons following the breakdown of the South Asian state’s government, the U.S. Congressional Research Service concluded in a report in July, 2011.

The research arm of Congress noted that Islamabad in the last decade has made considerable improve- ments to the security surrounding its grow- ing nuclear arsenal, which the report estimates at today encompassing 90 to 110 warheads.

“However, instability in Pakistan has called the extent and durability of these reforms into question. Some observers fear radical takeover of a government that possesses a nuclear bomb, or proliferation by radical sympathizers within Pakistan’s nuclear complex in case of a break- down of controls,” the analysis reads.

The euro will survive for now–but only because working people in Greece and other European countries face greater suffering. That’s the not-so-hidden agenda behind the new $227 billion bailout of Greece organized by most powerful countries of the European Union, mainly by France and Germany.

Riot police hits an old man during demonstrations in Athens on 29 June 2011| Author Ggia

In the weeks before the July 21 emergency meeting where the deal was announced, the common currency of 12 European countries seemed on the brink of collapse under the weight of the ever-widening debt crisis in Greece and other European countries.

Like this:

‘Pakistan’s government should immediately end widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the southwestern province of Balochistan.’

Quetta Railway Station | Wikimedia Commons

‘Several of those “dis- appeared” were among the dozens of people extra- judicially executed in recent months in the resource-rich, violence-wracked province,‘ says Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its 132-page report “‘We Can Torture, Kill, or Keep You for Years’: Enforced Disappearances by Pakistan Security Forces in Balochistan.”

Like this:

As the international community struggles to provide all possible assistance to more than 11 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya –adversely affected by the lack of food and long spell of drought –Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Luc Gnacadja, has drawn attention to an often ignored fact that “droughts do not happen overnight.”

Wikimedia Commons

While calling on the international community to respond urgently to the unfolding crisis, Gnacadja stressed the need for “effective long term solutions to the root causes of famine in drought prone regions.”

“The murderous rampage in Norway by a far-right sympathizer–and the media’s rush to blame an all-too-familiar scapegoat. Close to 100 people died in Norway at the hands of a far-right fanatic whose connections to the organized racists and Islamophobes extend to the anti-Muslim bigots in the U.S.”

South Sudanese population estimated in 9 million people, is overwhelmingly young, rural, poor and uneducated; only 4% of its vast arable land is cultivated; half the population does not have access to safe drinking water, and only one person in five uses a health-care facility in their lifetime.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

This grim picture has been drawn by the United Nations and revealed shortly after South Sudan declared independence of Sudan on July 9th.

In fact, the UN reports that South Sudan has “some of the worst development indicators” on Earth.

Like this:

When one of the most arrogant men in the world is forced to issue a full-page apology in national newspapers, you know that he feels he has little other choice. That must have been the calculation in the inner sanctum of News Corporation when billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch signed off on a full-page ad in several of his (and his competitors’) British newspapers.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to take a firm stand vis-a-vis Greece bleeding financial crisis, she was surly aware that black economy accounts as high as one-third of Greek GNP, that tax invasion amounts to 20 billion dollars a year, and that corruption is rooted everywhere, at all levels, particularly among political parties.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

These are some of the key facts that International Transparency Greece (TI-Greece) has identified in its reports about Greece.

Like this:

Europe has just confirmed what many reports have suspected for years — that EU member states are allowed (by themselves) to ship their radioactive waste -generated by its 143 nuclear reactors- to “third countries” to bury their highly dangerous material there.

In fact,“Exports of radioactive waste and spent fuel to countries outside the EU is allowed under very strict and binding conditions: the third country needs to have a final repository in operation, when the waste is being shipped,” says the EU “Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management Directive.”